When dealing with electronic commerce, security of information on a network is a problem faced by individuals and companies alike. For example, the security today between a user's computer and server computer in an electronic transaction does not preclude the user from fraudulently quoting another user's identification information, such as a user's password, credit card number, or social security number. Likewise, a server could similarly be fraudulently represented on the user's computer by someone to obtain the unsuspecting user's information. Therefore, in business transactions occurring over the internet today, full electronic commerce necessitates stronger authentication between the user's computer and the server computer.
For stronger authentication of both users and server computers, encryption and decryption may be used for the transmission of messages. The major barrier to mutual authentication of a user's computer communicating with a server computer is the inability of personal computers to provide tamperproof and confidential storage for these keys, which are vital for security of transmitted information. Smart cards, or credit-card sized devices that have user information embedded within the card, have recently addressed this issue. However, the smart cards are only as useful as the number of smart card readers available, which currently have not been widely adopted.
Therefore, it is desirable to produce an equivalent but unrestricted method to allow strong mutual authentication between devices.